


Triquetra

by Tattered_Dreams, Tori_Scribbles



Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types
Genre: A Cat... Sort Of, Alternate Universe - Magic, Angst, Historical Inaccuracy, Implied/Referenced Depression, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, M/M, Magical Animals, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Period Typical Attitudes, Triquetras are a thing, Witch Hunts, ambiguous setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 21:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17251412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tattered_Dreams/pseuds/Tattered_Dreams, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tori_Scribbles/pseuds/Tori_Scribbles
Summary: The villagers were coming for a witch, and Thomas had to get there first.





	Triquetra

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! ♥

The dense brittle undergrowth and shivering canopy of skeleton leaves that made up the sprawl of the Deadwood was like an entirely different world in the middle of the night.

Thomas knew the woods fairly well. He grew up in Maze; a rural village sprawled over the scrubby valley along the treeline. The cart tracks through the trees were some of the main trading routes and the fastest ways to neighbouring towns as well as the surrounding farmland, heather-grass moors and the winding Scorch Road to the coast. Most of the villagers knew that part of the Deadwoods.

Thomas knew it better.

He’d spent years as a child, running off out of the back door of his parent’s home and darting into the shadow of the trees. He had filled summers with tree climbing and bird-spotting and his winters with following animal tracks in the snow. He’d ventured off the rutted tracks into the fern and bramble thickets, finding the winding deer roads and the badger paths. It was an uneven place, the ground treacherous at the best of times but Thomas had been running between the trees for so many years that it rarely threw him wrong any more.

He had not run into it in the dead of night in years, though. And he picked a bad time for it. It was the cusp of winter. The frigid wind had claws and they raked through the boughs of the trees, crumbling bark and tearing at leaves. The canopy was still thick above; shades of bronze and scarlet under the November sun, but now muddied to purple and brown. It was dark; trees looming up out of the shadows, barely an arm’s length away. They creaked under the weight of the night sky, black and empty like spilled ink above, dripping down in the spaces between the branches. 

Thomas was running for a long time. It wasn’t safe to be out, but he hadn’t had a choice. If he’d stayed home, someone would have died.

**-**

People in the village used to mutter about the cabin in the woods. Thomas figured someone very weird lived there; the kind of person you could look at and know they were born wrong. But that wasn’t true. There was only one cabin, ensconced in a hollow between the trees, half buried in the sunken earth and strangled with ferns and creepers, moss growing at the window sills and in the gaps between the aged shingles on the roof.

He had been running for a while when it came into sight. His heart was frenzied, bruised on the cage of his ribs and adrenaline spun through his veins with knife-point horror. He knew he was faster, knew he could beat them here, but being sure of it didn’t numb the frantic fear that he could be wrong. 

Thomas slid down the icy banked earth to the hollow, tripping over his own exhausted limbs and barrelling for the door. 

He knocked hard, once, and then again when there was no sign of life. He knocked a third time when that did nothing and inside of thirty seconds he was banging hard on the warped little oak door, hanging vines recoiling away. He could barely even hear the sound of bone on wood over the blood rushing in his ears. 

And then a light flared through the dusty window pane; a tiny pinprick in the shrouded gloom.

The door cracked open, hinges groaning, and someone slipped into view, silhouetted by the swaying candle lantern in the hall behind him, throwing dancing shadows off of the walls.

“Thank God,” Thomas gasped, light-headed with relief and renewed urgency.

“Tommy?” Newt asked, stepping around the door. The weak moonlight was just enough to see by, stretching pale silver fingers through the trees. He was sleep mussed, dark eyes fogged and blond hair tousled, shivering just a little as he stood on the threshold of night-time in only thin sleepwear. He looked worried, though; brows drawn low and expression uneasy, collarbones standing out from the tense line of his shoulders. “What are you doing here?”

There was some kind of crash from inside the cottage. A meow followed it, a strangely pointed noise, and Thomas found himself remembering that Newt had mentioned a cat before.

Thomas knew the woods, and knew them well. He knew where to find this cabin, but he had never come here before. Newt had asked him not to, and he had only come now because he was terrified of what would happen if he kept that promise.

Newt was so tired, so freshly woken that the lilt of his British accent – just one other thing about him that was unusual enough to raise questions – came out thick and hazy. Thomas’ stomach twisted, a reaction he had long gotten used to when it came to this enigma of a boy. It didn’t take much to force it aside this time; worry still spiralling outwards through his nerves. He felt sick from the mess of chaotic emotion.

“I had to,” Thomas gasped. “Look, I know you probably won’t want to hear this but there was a meeting in Maze just a few hours ago. They’re coming here for you.” Thomas’ breath snagged at the back of his throat, apology warring with urgency. “They think- they think you’re a witch, Newt.”

Newt went still in the doorway.

There was another meow from the dark recesses of the cottage, the lantern still swaying behind the door. Newt was a collision of pallid moonlight and curling candle fire, trapped on the threshold. He took a long second to blink, eyes flickering with something that might have been fear or just caution, and then he swallowed.

“And what do you think?”

Thomas shrugged, as quietly and gently as he could. “I know you are.”

Newt’s fingers went white around the edge of the door. There was a spitting-hissing noise from the cottage and Thomas stopped breathing.

“You….know?” Newt’s voice was hollow, shaken, his eyes full of scattered thoughts. “I- how?”

Thomas sighed, glanced back over his shoulder. It was automatic, a human response to feeling the hair at the back of his neck stand up, to feeling like he was running out of time. There was no sign of that through the darkness of the trees framing the hollow. The shadows were silent and unmoving, even the foxes and owls that called the woods home were absent. Thomas had beaten the villagers here by a longer gap than he’d thought. He could only hope.

He turned back to Newt, exhaling shakily. “Things I’ve seen you do, like the time you picked up a bird with a broken wing and it flew off right after. Or the stuff you say; you called Frypan’s cookbook a Grimoire, whatever that is, for months after I introduced you. You gave a little girl in the village flowers that don’t bloom in the winter. You saved Chuck.”

Newt sagged against the door, his forehead dropping onto the wood. He looked torn, weighed down and Thomas hated the thought that saying it now, when he had kept silent for years, might hurt them. He couldn’t regret it, though; he would risk pushing Newt away all over again if it meant saving his life.

Newt finally sighed, nodded, and pushed at the door, hinges protesting once again. “Come in,” he said.

Newt retreated.

It wasn’t a command; it was an open offer, an invite only, but it was really no choice at all. Thomas stepped over the threshold after him.

 **-**  

For a place that was so small on the outside, it opened up considerably when he was standing inside.

A gnarled little spiral staircase rose up to a landing in the vaulted roof space. The walls were covered by bookcases and cabinets, none of which seemed to stand in straight lines, and all of which were full to bursting. None of the furniture matched. Rugs were laid at all angles over the warped floorboards, overlapping at the corners and the air smelled like sweet sage and thyme. A brick fireplace was embedded into the far wall, the hearth full of ashes and a domed black pot suspended above it from a spit, the contents smoking.

The cottage had been completely sleeping just moments ago, but now flames curled up from the abused wicks of numerous disfigured candles stationed in every tiny nook and cranny.

Newt stood quietly in the middle, shoulders curled in and expression taut with nervous anticipation.

Thomas turned a circle to take everything in, fresh herbs and the tainted aftertaste of sulphur flooding his lungs. “Newt, this is….” it’s amazing, but it’s also damning.

Even if the things clustered around the walls and on every available surface weren’t spell books and ledgers, cracked crystal balls and glass bottles of suspicious looking liquid, there was enough everywhere else for the village to hang him.

“This is what’s left,” Newt said. He looked relieved, but there was something unbearably sad about his expression and he suddenly looked so much like he belonged here; like he too was colourless under years of dust, cracked like the oracle ball.

“What do you mean ‘what’s left’?” Thomas asked. He frowned, casting his eyes across the nearest table, home to a discarded amulet of some kind and an open apothecary kit that’s buried in a densely woven spider web.

Newt sighed, reaching out and picking up a small knife from a chair. He turned it over between his hands, candlelight sliding across the oxidised silver swoop of the blade. It was stained; the blood on it old, brown and flaking under Newt’s fingers. Not a knife, then, but an Athame. Thomas had been taught back in school to recognise the identifiers of a Ritual blade on sight.

Something about watching Newt turn it over, eyes lost and contemplative made uncertain fear pulse through Thomas’ blood.

Newt said, “I don’t really practice any more.”

Thomas frowned at him. He had known Newt for years; always seen him in the village, selling herbs, spices and plants, always tugging the little cart back down the Trading track through the woods. For a long time Thomas thought Newt had lived the other side of the Deadwood. It was only during the winter that Chuck fell sick, when Thomas turned sixteen, that he found out Newt lived in this hollow between the trees. As long as he had known Newt, though, he had always been something just a little bit more, just a little bit unexplainable.

“You’ve been doing magic since I’ve known you,” Thomas replied.

“Not really,” Newt responded. “Just… here and there. Herbs have their own magic, if you grow them right. There are some things I can do without actually practicing.”

Thomas could remember long summer days, just last year, wandering the woods with Newt, watching him smile under the dappled sunlight and talking about what each plant could do.

“Why did you stop?”

Thomas prodded at the cobwebbed apothecary kit, tiny glass bottles chinking against one another in their little slots, labels yellow and peeling.

Newt drew a shallow breath, the sound of it rasping between his teeth. “I had a mentor but the townsfolk found him. He was too good to get caught. He was only covering for a mistake I made.”

Thomas’ blood went cold, the confession turning icy in the air and all the candles fluttering as one. He had never been more acutely aware of Newt’s limp; the old injury he’d never explained but simply seemed to co-exist with. He had never asked, and he didn’t think he ever would, but he found himself suddenly scared of the story underneath the damaged joints.

“But you sold me magic to heal Chuck,” Thomas said.

Newt set down the Athame and something in Thomas breathed a little easier.

Newt rubbed the back of his neck, bit at his lip. “Yeah,” he admitted, voice low. “You were buying herbs that could only do so much and he was your brother. I- I’d seen it before, I’d made that same cure before. I couldn’t just watch you lose him when I knew I could help.”

There was a long beat; a stillness in the air. Thomas cast his eyes over the cluttered evidence that Newt had tried to leave magic behind; burying it under layers of dust and quashing it from his own blood.

“You’re taking this well,” Newt commented, voice just a little careful. “You really knew?”

Thomas nodded. Then he stretched out, reaching for Newt’s wrist, gentle and slow enough that Newt could back away if he had wanted to. He didn’t move.

His pulse jumped under Thomas’ fingers as he turned Newt’s hand over, pushing his sleeve up, just a little. It was just enough to expose the slim black lines, interweaving in delicate arcs, printed into the skin inside of his wrist.

It was a triquetra; a three point pagan knot.

“This helped,” Thomas said quietly. “You didn’t have it when I met you. You got it two summers after and when I asked you what it was you said it made you feel safe. I took the Scorch Road to the library in the city after that. I think the Librarian was concerned that I was looking for exorcism rituals or something, but I found this symbol. Its for protection.”

“Symbols have different qualities, depending on how they’re used,” Newt offered, just as quietly, into the delicate space between them. “If you carve them into bone they’re strongest. If you draw them with blood they’re unpredictable. Ink and paper usually doesn’t mean much, but it’s something.”

“And if you tattoo it?”

Newt released a shaking, almost relieved breath. “Maybe not as strong, but lasting.”

“Why this?” Thomas asked.

Newt bit his lip, eyes casting down to trace the mark. He seemed hesitant but, a beat later he lifted his gaze to Thomas to say, hushed, “It’s the strongest one I know. Threes tend to be; usually, each point stands for something.”

There was another noise; a crack and then shattering glass and Thomas startled, dropping Newt’s wrist and wheeling around. A small jar had hit the floor, fragments of it shining under the candlelight like molten gold, and it had spilled fine white sand in a thick swathe across a worn Persian rug.

A sleek black cat stood on the table it had clearly been pushed from. It looked entirely apathetic, its expression flat and bored, ears turned back in little points and front paws pressed neatly together at the very edge of the table.

Newt sighed and rubbed his forehead.

“Go ahead,” the cat said, in a voice that was distinctly human and not at all feline. “Tell him why you got it or we’ll be here all night and it sounded five minutes ago like Thomas was in a rush.”

“His name is Minho,” Newt explained, giving the cat in question a look of utmost exasperation. “And he knows he isn’t meant to talk but he can’t seem to help himself.”

“Could he always talk?” Thomas asked. He could still feel his heart thundering, shock spitting through his veins and tight, white pressure in his chest.

“He wasn’t always a cat,” Newt said flatly, which was sort of an answer.

Thomas shook himself. There would be time for that later - there had to be - right now Minho’s appearance had jarred him and he felt the fear rise up in his chest again, the iciness of it shard-like in his lungs.

“Never mind that,” he said, shaking his head. “He- it- You have to leave. I ran here but they were leaving the village right behind me. You know what it’s like; they’re afraid of anything different. You can’t be here when they find this place.”

Newt stepped forwards to take Thomas’ hands and the sudden grasp stilled him, made his panic twist into something nauseating at the thought that this - some kind of indefinable potential future - was in jeopardy.

“I have to be,” Newt said, quietly. “If I’m not then they’ll never stop looking.”

“We can hide you,” Thomas insisted. He broke his hands from Newt’s, digging in his pockets. He emptied them on the table between the Athame and spiderwebs, a piece of twine, a dented copper coin, a hand-whittled little model and what he was looking for; a scrap of paper that he’d scribbled a vague map onto. He seized it, opening it out to show Newt. “This. This is Frypan’s farm. We have space there, and it’s on the edge of the moorland.”

Newt looked torn up, hope in his expression at war with the way he was strangely shadowed, drawing back. “I can’t, Thomas.”

Minho scoffed at them from the table, tail flicking with vague irritation. Newt scowled at him then turned, wheeling back to Thomas with helpless frustration etched into his staccato gestures.

“This is why I never wanted you to come here. If you ever saw this you would become complicit in keeping my secret. It’s why I could never tell you what I was, what I was born into. It wouldn’t have been fair, to make you carry this, not when you couldn’t know what that meant. It puts you in more danger than you know, being associated with me.”

“I’ve been associated with you since I was fifteen,” Thomas pointed out. “All of Maze knows that. Even if you did keep this away from me to protect me… they probably think I already know anyway.”

Newt was quiet, faintly shaking in the trembling light of all the candles.

Distant, just barely discernible, Thomas could hear the clattering sounds of lots of pairs of boots as they made their way through the trees, cracking twigs and skeleton leaves underfoot.

They were out of time.

“I’m already in this,” Thomas said, urgency turning the world to technicolour. “Newt you- you’re….You may not think you’re worth all this any more - and you’re wrong about that - but you can’t just stay here and-” Thomas thought, with some residual panic, about the way Newt had balanced the old Athame between his hands, the contemplation in his face. “- let them come for you. They’ll kill you.”

“He’s not that stupid,” the cat said, sniffing and lifting a paw to inspect it. It certainly didn’t act like any cat Thomas had seen. He wondered what that story was, how many stories he might have missed with Newt afraid to tell him the truth.

He wanted a chance to learn them all.

Newt grasped Thomas’ hands again, snatching his attention. “Tommy. I said they had to catch me here or they’d never stop looking. I didn’t say I was planning to die here.”

Adrenaline coursed through Thomas’ veins as his heart pounded in his chest. This was all too much. They were barely adults and here they were making decisions that could impact whether somebody lived or died. It made him feel sick.

“I can’t just leave you behind,” he said, shaking his head, hearing his own voice crack.

Newt’s fingers pressed down into Thomas’ in an almost painful grip. “You have to trust me,” he said. “Take Minho with you. Get to safety. I’ll be right behind you.” He went to pull away, but Thomas’ hands held fast. “Tommy, you have to let go. I’ll be alright.”

Thomas swallowed thickly. Thoughts too dreadful to consider raced through his mind. He could picture the cluttered room of forgotten and archaic trinkets, Newt left alone at its centre as all the candles snuffed out and the door was rammed in. He shook his head, barely managing a choked, “I can’t.”

Newt’s expression softened and he stepped forwards, into Thomas’ space and Thomas had to tilt his head back to meet his eyes.

“You can,” Newt said, certain, “and you will. I know what I’m doing. I knew one day they’d come for me. Minho knows what’s going to happen. Take him and run. I will do everything I can to be right behind you.”

“What if this doesn’t work?”

Newt smiled, something sad and quiet. “Then you’ll both be safe.” his voice softened, like he’d already made peace with this option. “You have a life away from this; a little brother, friends. They need you.” It was a low blow and they both knew it. But they also both knew it was what was needed.

It couldn’t matter what feelings Thomas may or may not have had for Newt, or how long they might have been there, left untended like a garden that grew wild without you noticing. He just knew that every time he looked back at them they were more beyond his control than before. It was just never something that they could have; not while Newt had kept secrets to protect him and not when he had kept them right back for fear of losing what they did have.

None of that could matter. Thomas couldn’t leave his baby brother behind.

Thomas clutched at Newt’s hands tighter as he tried to memorise Newt’s face; the furrowed brow and angle of his jaw, the shadows in his eyes. In many ways he was the same as he had been the day Thomas met him; a stick-thin teenager on the Trade track to the village with the lopsided cart of herbs grown in sulphur soil.

And suddenly it didn’t feel like enough to memorise it.

Thomas surged forwards but it was Newt who closed the gap between them. Thomas had never wanted the first time he kissed Newt to be about a goodbye, but he’d been told it was better to have loved and lost something than to have never have had it at all. So perhaps this would only hurt more later, but right now, tasting desperation on the seam of Newt’s mouth and feeling his pulse surge between their clasped hands, Thomas couldn’t bring himself to care.

They pulled apart just as abruptly as they came together, but Thomas felt more awake than he had all night. The world was in vivid technicolour; candlelight pulsing at the edge of his vision as the sound of tramping boots outside grew ever closer.

It was time.

“Go,” Newt said urgently, pulling his hands away. He scooped Minho up off of a chair and pushed him into Thomas’ arms. Outside the sounds of dogs barking and villagers shouting were getting louder. “Out the back door and don’t look back. If they find you, no matter what they say, you don’t know me. Understand?”

Thomas nodded, hating it, feeling the want to refuse twisting his nerves into knots. “I understand,” he said, taking a step to the door, but he paused before he could reach it and looked back. “Newt, I--” He broke off. He what? Nothing he felt and certainly nothing he could put into words could make any of this any easier to bear. But Newt seemed to understand.

He nodded. “I know,” he said. “I’ll see you soon.”

Thomas gave a sharp nod. Taking a deep breath, he pulled open the door and he ran.

 **-**  

The sky was still dark when Thomas broke through the treeline. He was out of breath again, for the second time in a matter of hours, head spinning and vision blurring at the edges. It could have been tears or just the upheaval of leaving the way he did, of feeling his lungs reaching their limit and continuing to push them anyway.

He could feel his blood burning behind his eyes, rushing in his ears. He couldn’t feel the bite of autumn any more.

Frypan’s farm stood in the streaky shadows, the little house folded into the edge of the valley. It was surrounded by paddocks lined with stock fence and dotted with dozing sheep and goats. It looked sleepy and peaceful in a way that was etched in wrongness after the night’s events.

Minho was still in his arms. He’d tried to be still as Thomas ran, tried not to dig his claws in too deep or protest at being jostled. Thomas could only hope he hadn’t accidentally hurt him. The black fur was just as sleek as it looked; almost touch-repellent. Thomas had worried he was going to drop him more than once.

Despite Newt’s warning, he turned back to look the way he’d come.

The woods were usually a silhouette at this hour; just a blackened mass against the spread of sky. They usually didn’t move or breathe; owls, badgers and other nightlife hidden deep in the undergrowth.

Tonight they weren’t.

They were lit up from the back, a violent wash of firelight lashing up into the air. Leaves were curling into flame, the smell of burning bark scattering animals from their homes in droves. There were the distant shouts of the villagers who had gone into the Deadwood that night, carrying their torches and pitchforks, holding a noose between them as if they had planned to hang a boy on the suspicion of witchcraft right then. They were running too, a forest-fire at their heels. It would burn too fast and too angry for all of them to make it out again.

That was something else Thomas had learned back in school.

The Deadwoods hadn’t been named that for nothing.

But as they go up in flames, smoke thick enough to seep through the trees and funnel up towards the stars, Thomas could only hope that one person would make it out alive.

“You should know,” Minho says, his voice soft as it rumbles from his feline throat. “The triquetra. The third point - it was for you.”

* * *

The farmhouse was quiet and eerie. The deep autumn nights were long and cold. Doors were closed tight, shutters sealed and the only sign of life were the embers, crackling away to themselves in the fireplace.

Thomas hadn’t slept since it all happened.

He'd hardly moved.

He just sat at the kitchen table, staring vacantly down at the now cold mug of tea cradled between his hands. The blanket that Frypan had set around his shoulders hung there untouched. The chill in the night air had seeped into his aching bones and exhaustion wore heavily down upon him, making every breath and blink a struggle.

Minho leapt silently on top of the table, nudging Thomas’ hand with his head and Thomas scratched his ears absently, sighing at the flat look he got from the cat.

“I know,” he murmured. “It’s all part of the plan. I just have to wait.” He couldn’t help but glance back up at the clock for the millionth time in the past day. “It’s been a day. What if he didn’t get out in time?”

Minho just nipped at his fingers, scolding; a silent reminder to calm down and Thomas tried to heed his advice.

Seconds ticked by, becoming long drawn out minutes and Thomas once again lost track of time as his mind whirled with worry.

He was brought back to the moment when Minho stilled by his hand, head tilted to the side as he stared at the door as though he was listening to something outside that human ears couldn't hear. Seconds later a soft knock echoed through the tiled kitchen in the three am gloom.

Thomas’ head shot up at the sound, his heart hammering in his chest as his eyes fixed on the front door. The noise was gone as quickly as it came and for a second he thought he’d imagined it; until they knocked again.

He shot up to his feet, the chair screeching back on the flagstone floor and the blanket fell from his shoulders but Thomas didn’t care to see where it landed, he was already moving around the table and towards the little stooped hallway. Hope burnt like an oil candle inside of him as he wrenched the door open, barely noticing the icy wind that hit his face as his attention fixed on the hooded figure on his doorstep.

A thick, dark cloak was drawn up over his head and a worn bag lay in the brittle dead leaves at his feet. There was frost at their edges; blue-white and prickly and Thomas’ tired mind faltered for a second as he processed that the first turn of winter seemed to finally be descending. He pushed that thought away. The weather wasn’t important right now.

He looked back up, meeting the stranger’s eyes and relief washed through him as he realised this wasn’t a stranger at all.

Newt looked worn and hollow, dark circles under his eyes and despite the distance between them, Thomas could smell the acrid scent of smoke that clung to him.

“What happened?” he asked, his voice hoarse. “How did you find us?”

“Tracking spell.” Newt shrugged, pulling something from under his cloak and, in the shifting, weak light of a waxing moon, it took Thomas a second to realise what it was - Chuck’s small hand-whittled model. Thomas’ hand immediately flew to his pocket, finding it empty and  cursing himself for leaving that behind. It was something he rarely went anywhere without and he’d been in such a rush the night before, he never stopped to check he had everything. His heart surged with gratitude, thankful that Newt hadn’t let that, of all things, burn. He said, “You left it behind last night. It led me here.”

He held it out and Thomas took it with careful fingers, gliding them over the smooth wood as he tried not to picture his brother’s heartbroken expression if he’d lost it.

“Thank you,” he said thickly, shoving it safely back in his pocket.

Newt tried to smile, but the exhaustion was too heavy and it ended up looking more like a grimace. “Do you still have space for one more?” he asked and Thomas smiled, stepping back to hold open the door.

“Come in.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoy it!


End file.
